Date Nights
by madam-stardust
Summary: Eri and Fio try to fall in love, carefully.


The Sparrows are out at the firing range, kneeling down, peering out at the target dummies with one eye open. Fio's hand still wavers, but Eri's is steady as a statue.

"You busy tonight?" Eri suddenly yells over the din.

Fio freezes, blinking, trying to recognize what she just said. "What?" she asks. "Sorry, I just-" She glances over at Eri. "Hard to concentrate."

"Sorry." Eri fires off another round of shots, and then stands up to wipe her brow. She looks so good like that, Fio sighs in her head, so tall and brave. "Just wanted to ask if you were doing anything tonight."

"Oh," says Fio, and she stands up too. "Oh, no, nothing. Why?"

"You wanna go get a drink?"

"Sorry," Fio says. "I don't drink."

Eri glances at her, blinking. It takes Fio a moment before she realizes what's actually going on. "But," she says quickly, brightening up, "I could sure go for a burger."

* * *

There's a burger joint on base, and it's okay, but the company is better than the food. Still, Fio stuffs her face with single-minded concentration, and Eri watches.

"Sorry about earlier," Fio says, after gulping down a mouthful of burger. "I just zone out when I'm into something, you know? I didn't mean to like...snub you or anything."

"It's fine, it's fine," Eri says, waving it away. "You know, you're really good. That concentration's really paying off."

"You think so?" Fio says, smiling. "Thanks! Maybe I can get good enough that I can carry on a conversation like you do..."

"It'll come to ya," Eri says, leaning back in her chair and sipping a Coke. "Don't worry."

Fio finishes her burger and starts on the fries. "Um," she ventures meekly, and Eri looks at her. "Thanks for the food. Next time, how about I treat you?"

Eri's eyebrows dart up at that, and then she breaks into a relieved laugh. It's one of the first times Fio's seen Eri crack a smile, and she grins too. "Sure, sure, I'd love that," she says. "You free tomorrow night?"

"Yeah, I think so," Fio says, and they smile at each other, hesitantly.

Eri pulls back a little, the smile slowly fading from her face. "You know," she says, "I gotta be up front with you, Fio. I mean, since we've been together for a while, anyway." There's nobody else in the restaurant, but she leans forward and drops her voice a little anyway. "I really like you."

Fio's face burns and she can't tell if her blood is freezing or bubbling. "Really?" she squeaks out.

"Yeah." Eri glances away, her brow furrowed under her blonde bangs. "You're really cute. But I don't wanna...make you uncomfortable." She catches Fio's eye and lets it go just as quickly. "You know what I mean?"

Fio chews thoughtfully. To tell the truth, she wouldn't call herself the sharpest tool in the shed. She spaced out sometimes, she was gullible, she misunderstood people...

"Eri," she says carefully, "do you mean to say you have a crush on me?"

Eri stares at her, then laughs a little and looks away. "Yeah," she says. "Yeah, exactly."

Fio gives her a big, bright grin. "I'm okay with that."

Eri smiles back, and she has a peaceful look on her face that Fio's never seen before.

* * *

"I don't make a big deal out of it," Eri says, as they walk out of a mediocre movie show. "I don't wanna draw attention."

"The Regular Army doesn't have any policy against that, though, right?" Fio asks.

"No," her friend replies. "But still. I got some weird feelings about it."

Fio waits for her to go on, but Eri suddenly switches tracks. "If they had a policy against it, Marco and Tarma would've been booted out long ago," she chuckles.

Fio gapes. "Marco and Tarma are boyfriends?"

Their next date is canceled due to sudden intel that the Rebel Army's been scavenging for supplies in a nearby landfill. "That's so sad," Fio says, as she crouches behind a wrecked car and fires a few shots at the ground to send the soldiers running. "They can't even afford new supplies."

"Don't feel too bad for 'em," Eri says gruffly, and she pops one of their makeshift tanks right in the engine. It rumbles, hesitates, and then explodes with a _foom_, sending the pilot flying. "They'd kill you if they got half a chance."

"I know," Fio says. Suddenly something comes whizzing up over the top of the car, and Eri slams into Fio and they roll out of the way, over and over, and there's a sudden _boom-crack-crack-crack_ and the sound of shrapnel shattering the windshield.

They stay on the ground like that for a moment, Eri's arm slung across Fio's waist. Her glasses are skewed and her breath is tight in her throat.

"You okay?" Eri whispers.

"Yeah," Fio says. "I think."

Eri leaps up onto the car and sends a rain of bullets over the side. A soldier screams. "Got him," she grunts. "The rest are gone. Good riddance."

Fio gets to her feet shakily. She watches Eri stand on the car, tall and proud, and suddenly Fio sees her leg buckle and bleed. "Eri," she calls, and Eri half-falls, half-slides off the car with a hiss.

"Shit!" she says, "I didn't even feel it. Fucking cowards."

Fio races to her side and props her up, leading her away from the junkyard. "I'm sorry," she apologizes reflexively, but Eri doesn't notice.

"Vermin," Eri hisses, limping away. "At least they didn't hurt you."

* * *

Soon, Eri lays on a bed in the sick bay. As one of the medics patches up her leg, she looks over to see Fio next to her and reaches over to squeeze her hand. "Thanks," she says, and those words make something bloom in Fio's chest. "You were great out there."

Eri can hit a target with a rocket launcher from a quarter of a mile away. She can run faster, jump farther and hit harder than anyone else in the Sparrows. She was abandoned on the steps of a church as a child and was leader of her own gang by sixteen, then a spy, and finally an officer in Sparrows Special Ops.

Fio's a rich kid from a rich family who was born into the army.

She feels something shine whenever she looks at Eri, and whenever Eri looks back. Something flutters in her chest, but she doesn't know what it is, and that's the scary part.

* * *

"Fio?" Eri says, gently shaking Fio out of her stupor. "You okay?"

They're in the mess hall, just the two of them, because they haven't had any time to head back to the burger place. "What?" Fio mumbles, rubbing her eyes. "I'm sorry, I..."

"You've been sleepwalking through the whole day," Eri says. "Something's on your mind. Wanna talk about it?"

"No," says Fio bluntly.

"Oh," Eri says, leaning back a little. "Okay. Sorry."

"No," Fio says in a rush, "I'm sorry. I'm really sorry. I just feel really weird lately." She takes off her glasses and buries her head in her hands, massaging her temples. "I'm sorry."

"Is it...?" Eri says, trailing off. "Never mind. You don't have to talk about it now. It's okay."

She reaches over to lay her hand on Fio's shoulder, and that does it. "I'm sorry!" she bursts out in a sob. "I feel really weird when I look at you and I don't know if I like you because I like you, or if it's just because you like me instead!"

"It's okay, it's okay," Eri whispers. "Slow down, just take it easy."

Fio sniffs and wipes her face with her napkin. "Like, I don't..." she struggles. "I really like that you like me...that you...approve of me. But I don't know if that's the same as what you're feeling." She looks up through bleary eyes, and the big splotch of color that is Eri nods at her. "Does that make sense?"

"Yeah," Eri says quietly. "I get what you mean. It's okay. I sort of feel the same way about you, too."

Eri blinks and puts her glasses back on. "Really?"

"I mean, I always really liked you," Eri confesses, "but I was kind of mad at myself. Like, here's this new recruit who really looks up to me, who's really smart and talented and everything, and I wanna be a good role model, you know?" she explains, and she's staring at something off to the side now, combing back through her memory. "And then I go hit on you and ask you out and just...I feel like a total sleaze. I don't want you to feel like..." She looks down at her food and pokes at it listlessly with a fork. "Like you gotta reciprocate if you're not feeling it."

"I dunno," Eri sighs, after a quiet moment. "Sorry."

* * *

Eri doesn't bring it up after that. She doesn't look at Fio, doesn't say anything to her outside of "good work" or "you need to work on that," and Fio knows why, because she's doing the same thing too. They don't hate each other. They're just thinking.

It's only when they're back at the firing range when something dawns on Fio, something important, and she raises her voice. "Eri!" she yells. "I gotta tell you something!"

Eri stands up and takes off her ear protectors. "Yeah?" she says. "What's wrong?"

"I've been thinking," Fio says, taking off hers as well. "Remember when we got burgers together? And when we saw that movie that wasn't very good?"

"Uh-huh." Eri glances at her. Guiltily.

"I really liked it," Fio confesses. "I liked it just for being together."

"Me too," Eri agrees. "When we weren't all worked up over abilities and ranks and shit."

"Yeah."

"You know, you're really good," says Eri, leaning her gun up against the barrier. "You're a walking encyclopedia and you're awesome with the Slugs. And you notice when I get hurt more than I do," she laughs. "So try not to get too down on yourself."

"Thanks," Fio sighs, and she feels a smile tug at her lips. "And I didn't think you were being manipulative or creepy or anything. I mean it. I was just...flattered. Really flattered. So I didn't know if it was a crush or just being really flattered. You know?"

"I know," Eri agrees. "I guess we gotta just take it easy for a while."

"I think so," says Fio, peering out at the targets. Her bullet holes are tightly grouped in a cluster at the dummy's shoulder. _Huh, _she thinks._ I couldn't do that a week ago. _

"How about we try again?" she says. "Do you want to go out tomorrow night?"

"I'd be okay with that," Eri replies. A quiet moment hangs in the air between them. "Hey, Fio?"

"Mm?"

"We're still friends, right?"

"Of course," Fio says, grinning. Eri turns to her, smiling, and even though it's a smile full of nervousness, Fio can tell she's okay.

* * *

The next movie is way better than the first. They spend so much time talking about it on the way back to camp that Fio barely notices when her hand reaches out and takes Eri's fingers between her own.


End file.
